Systems biology analysis of programmed cell death.

Systems biology, a combined computational and experimental approach to analyzing complex biological systems, has recently been applied to understanding the pathways that regulate programmed cell death. This approach has become especially crucial because recent advances have resulted in an expanded view of the network, to include not just a single death module (apoptosis) but multiple death programs, including programmed necrosis and autophagic cell death. Current research directions in the systems biology field range from quantitative analysis of subprocesses of individual death pathways to the study of interconnectivity among the various death modules of the larger network. These initial studies have provided great advances in our understanding of programmed cell death and have important clinical implications for drug target research.